‘Inviting children to ride in street wildly irresponsible’

People Power Santa Cruz director Micah Posner was ticketed for organizing a bike parade down King Street last November without a permit.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel, which describes Posner as “outspoken” (hah! He’s a mild mannered family guy who generally prefers diplomacy over confrontation), reports that the police claim the bike parade was ‘counter intuitive’ because (get this) “He’s inviting families to come out, with their kids, to ride in the street.” The horror! We can’t have families riding their bikes in the street in Santa Cruz!

The city attorney of this Silver level Bicycle Friendly Community backed up Santa Cruz police captain Steve “Because I Can” Clark by filing the paperwork.

Other parades, such as the huge parade of cars every summer weekend into Santa Cruz or the daily parade to 9-to-5 work sites, remain unpermitted, with police refusing to cite the organizers of these parades.

People Power Santa Cruz advocate converting King Street into a bicycle boulevard, using bike-traversable diverters to limit through traffic on King. King Street parallels Mission Street in Santa Cruz and is favored as a bike route to get across town. The bicycle boulevard concept for King Street is supported by People Power, Greenways to School, King Street Neighbors, Lower Escalona Neighborhood, the Community Traffic Safety Coalition, the Greater Santa Cruz Federation of Teachers, the Campaign for Sensible Transportation and Santa Cruzans for Responsible Planning.

Read more in the Sentinel. I’ve asked Micah if he can have the LAB revoke Santa Cruz’s “Bicycle Friendly Community” status.